


...on remembering

by ponticle



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bittersweet, Developing Relationship, Drug Dealing, Drug Use, M/M, Memories, POV Multiple, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-02
Updated: 2018-05-02
Packaged: 2019-04-30 16:30:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14501037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ponticle/pseuds/ponticle
Summary: Cullen Rutherford tells the story of his torrid relationship with Raleigh Samson from rehab. Variable POV and non-traditional timeline.For the other half of my real life rare pair. <3 Happy (angsty) birthday.





	...on remembering

**Author's Note:**

  * For [little_abyss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/little_abyss/gifts).



* * *

“So Cullen, what are you hoping to get out of therapy?” she asks.

I can’t help but roll my eyes. _What, indeed_? This whole experience was court mandated… ‘an integral part of my recovery,’ the judge had said… I knew what that meant: the _only_ other option besides jail time… a reward for letting someone else take the blame… for sending Leigh to prison.

“Cullen?” she prompts.

“Yeah…” I clear my throat and lean forward, elbows resting on knees… it’s a point of contact that makes me feel like the room isn’t going to spin away from me. It’s funny—all the nights we spent sailing ships across a drug-addled ocean and _this_ is the most seasick I’ve felt in ages… this stupid couch in this stupid rehab…

“I’m uh… hoping to figure out what I’m doing now… what I should be… focusing on,” I explain finally.

She nods and crosses one leg over the other. I notice it happens _away_ from me, but I can’t really blame her—I’m a mess.

“So where would you like to begin?” she asks.

“Isn’t that what _you’re_ here for?”

She smiles in a way that looks almost wry. It actually makes me like her more than anything else she’s done or said so far. I can’t remember her name. I wasn’t planning on learning it, actually, but now I might if I get the opportunity…

“All right…” I amend. “I think I’d like to start at the beginning… I mean… it’s the only way I know how to do it—chronologically…”

She nods again. She has this super short black hair that keeps falling onto her forehead. It seems like it bugs her, because she pushes it back every time. I don’t know _why_ I’m noticing all this garbage… feels like a waste of sobriety… but maybe I used to do this… before…? I can’t remember…

“I can’t really remember that much about the beginning,” I blurt, finishing my internal dialogue and beginning a new one out loud.

“Is that because of the drugs?” she asks. “The details are hazy?”

“No, actually… um… it’s more like…” My eyes wander around the room over her head. I feel like the words I need are hiding out there—somewhere in the periphery. “I actually _remember_ everything; it just doesn’t feel like the memories are mine. It feels like something that happened to someone _else_.”

“Ahh,” she says. “Then narrate it.”

“What?”

“Tell me the _story_ of what happened? If you have that kind of perspective on it, let’s use that to our advantage,” she says.

It feels weird, but it can’t be any weirder than the rest of this. I shrug and settle more deeply into the couch. It’s hideous, I notice—pea green and worn on the edges. I wonder how many other dickheads sat here, gripping these armrests, recounting the worst moments of their lives for _what’s-her-name_ … fucking sadist.

“Well… It all started a year ago… almost to the day…”

 

**12 Months Ago**

 

A tumble of arms and legs, lips and teeth… stubble scratching, fingernails scraping…

But it isn’t until the _morning_ that Cullen knows something has happened—something he didn’t expect.

“Hey,” _he_ says—this stranger whose bed Cullen’s lying in… “Want some coffee?”

Cullen blinks a few times and picks up his head. This is the moment when he usually discovers he has a hangover or that he’s ill or _still_ _drunk_ from the night before, but this morning he doesn’t. He’s alarmingly clear, despite… everything…

“Yeah, thanks,” he manages, sitting up and swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. The sheets are tangled—coming up on the corner nearest his head. When he looks at their seams, he remembers _why_. Sighs and whimpers. Kisses and grunts. Everything but _names_. _Shit._

“I’m Cullen, by the way,” he says.

“Yeah, I know.”

Cullen bites the inside of his cheek. “...and who are _you_?”

“Does it matter?”

Cullen screws up his face— _thinks_. It seems to, actually, which is _new_. He laughs, “I’d like to know who sucked my dick last night—you know… thank you notes and whatnot.”

A laugh—low and gravelly—but still no name.

“C’mon, who _are_ you?” asks Cullen again. Now it’s just _annoying_. He stands and paws at his pants on the floor. His wallet falls out to the side and he has to hunch to pick it up, so when an answer finally comes, he doesn’t see the expression that accompanies it.

“Everyone just calls me Samson,” he says finally.

Cullen looks up, his jeans half-way up his hips. _Samson_ —it sounds familiar. He looks around the room surreptitiously. It only takes a second to put the pieces together now that he has that one little fact. An instrument case in the corner—badly worn on the edges, and rectangular, but shorter than the one he carries… a _guitar…_ various posters… empty cans of red bull and an oddly bent spoon…

“But that’s not your _name_ , is it?” asks Cullen suddenly.

Samson turns away from the coffee maker and leans backward against the counter. His expression is neutral, but his posture belies some kind of nervous tension—muscles drawn tight under the skin.

“It’s… Regan? Ryan?” guesses Cullen. “No… something _like_ that… R—R… Raleigh!” He laughs and finishes pulling his pants up. “You sang that second-to-last song last night. You were great.”

Samson—Raleigh—seems to relax considerably. It makes Cullen wonder what he _thought_ was about to happen. Clearly it _didn’t_ , whatever it was.

“Thanks,” says Raleigh.

“You’re welcome.” But some kind of invisible barrier seems to have fallen between them. Cullen fiddles with his hair and looks for his shirt. He doesn’t want to stay here… but he can’t seem to leave.

“You’re good too…” Raleigh adds. “I saw your set.”

“Thanks,” says Cullen. “I appreciate that… our sound is a little rough still… if you ever wanted to… I think we could use some feedback…” It’s an absurd thing to say to a person he doesn’t know, but it feels better than the alternative: leaving and never seeing this guy again.

Thankfully, Raleigh doesn’t seem fazed. “Yeah, I think I’d like that.”

And, although it seems unlikely, Cullen has a little feeling… a twinge somewhere deep in his chest… that this random stranger actually means it.

 

* * *

 

 

“So you started a relationship right away?” she interrupts.

I laugh. “I’d hardly call it a relationship… we _fucked_ , though.” I expect that she might blush at the use of the expletive—she did when I said ‘dick’ earlier—but nothing happens.

“Right…” she clears her throat. “So when did it become something else?”

I’m not sure, actually, although I have sort of an idea. “It was a lot of little things, I think.” I run a hand through my hair and stare at the floor. This whole experience is so exposing; it’s hard to stand. “I mean, it isn’t like we had some big fucking conversation… _I like you; do you like me_?”

This time she actually laughs. Maker, I wish I knew her name.

“But I think the first time I thought we were _something_ was actually after our friend’s career totally exploded. Well… friend is relative…” I laugh to myself. “Someone we knew got really famous all at once—name’s Anders… have you heard of him?”

She shakes her head.

“Yeah, well… totally took everyone by surprise…” I continue. “It was actually pretty shitty… like… there were so many other things going on in the Kirkwall scene at the time… but… sometimes fame is like that… and you’ve gotta run with it… and let me tell you—Anders ran… Anyway, I’m getting off topic. So right after that all happened, the rest of us were sort of left to our own devices.”

“What was that?” she interrupts.

“What was _what_?”

“That expression… are you smiling?”

I reflexively raise my hand to my mouth. “I guess I was…”

She nods and writes something on her notepad. I really wish she’d stop doing shit like that. It’s making me nervous. I sigh a breath and try to refocus. It would be _so easy_ to get angry at her, but I’m really trying not to. _She’s_ not the problem here, even though every fiber of me wants someone else to blame.

“Anyway… I tried to work on my own stuff a little harder… but Raleigh… he didn’t.”

“Why not?”

“I think he found it overwhelming,” I say. “Or maybe he was already in too deep with everything else; I’m not sure.”

She nods.

“Yeah… but I remember this one day… it was when I knew something was about to change.”

 

**10 Months Ago**

 

“Fucking shit,” says Cullen. More accurately, he _shouts_ it. It’s a feeling like he’s never had before—something raw and real and beautiful. And it’s because of him: Leigh.

They use nicknames now… Leigh and Lenny… L and L… but _only_ when they’re alone. In public, they still pretend not to know each other… Cullen isn’t really sure why.

“I have neighbors, you know,” says Raleigh.

“Yeah? And do you _know_ them?” asks Cullen. He rolls onto his back and stares up at the ceiling.

Raleigh laughs. It’s a sort of rumbling sound that Cullen is starting to get used to… he’s beginning to get used to _all_ of it… the shitty apartment… the sound of running water from the apartment upstairs…the way Raleigh works out chord progressions when he thinks Cullen is asleep…

“I should probably go soon,” says Cullen, without making a move. It’s a test… to see if Raleigh will ask him to stay.

He doesn’t, though. In fact, he shifts in the bed and rolls onto his side, reaching for something. Cullen watches, but only in the most perfunctory of ways; his mind is still sliding sideways… post-coital euphoria _and_ something else… a haze of something like happiness. It all comes to a screeching halt when he looks over, though…

“What are you doing?” he balks, sitting up. He moves so fast he smacks his head against the wall behind them—in keeping with the _aesthetic_ of the apartment, there is no headboard.

Raleigh laughs again. “What are you, twelve?”

Cullen feels his expression turn as he looks at the needle. Raleigh unwraps an alcohol prep pad and wipes it across his arm while Cullen watches. The injection is as practiced as the most competent phlebotomist, which suggests to Cullen that he’s been doing this a long time.

Cullen stands up, suddenly, trying to find his pants. “I’ve gotta get out of here,” he mumbles at the floor.

“What?” says Raleigh. He rolls his eyes pointedly. Cullen can see the gesture, even peripherally. “You think you’re so high and mighty just because you only drink and smoke? Funny place to draw the line.”

Cullen swallows. “It’s a lot different. I’m not doing anything _dangerous_.”

Raleigh scoots up higher in the bed and rests his head against the wall. “Don’t worry about me; I can handle this. It helps with the music.”

And although Cullen knows it’s insane, he actually kind of _believes_ him. He argues a little more—for what reason, he isn’t sure—but eventually, he crawls back into bed with Raleigh and kisses him. They make love and sing softly and wake up the next morning like nothing ever happened. Cullen is good at selective memory.

 

* * *

 

 

“So you weren’t involved in the drugs yourself?” she asks.

“No… not at first,” I mumble. “I mean, I wasn’t even really interested in that kind of thing…”

She peers at me over her notepad, skepticism apparent.

“I mean… not until Leigh and I got… more serious…” It sounds so stupid now that I’m saying it out loud. I might as well scream ‘I’m a moron’ through the halls of the rehab… and maybe that’s the point. Isn’t everyone who gets addicted to drugs kind of a fucking moron? I _feel_ like one… “It really didn’t help with the music, either... I know he thought it did, but... I never felt it.”

“Cullen, why don’t you tell me what happened next? How did you get involved in the drugs?”

I nod. This is the hard part… but I have nothing left to lose.

 

**7 Months Ago**

 

“Leigh?” Cullen knocks on the door again—pounds it. “Leigh, open the door!” It’s been a day of bad sound checks and botched rehearsals. He just wants to sleep for a year, but Leigh hasn’t picked up any of his calls. “Leigh?”

A shuffling sound and a variety of voices inside tips him off that someone’s coming. He backs up and bites his lip. The door can’t open fast enough. Nevertheless, he isn’t ready for what he sees. The whole place is full of strangers.

Leigh grabs him by the shoulder and pulls him into a sloppy and unexpected kiss. It’s actually quite rough and he’s using too much tongue, but Cullen lets him—it’s the first time they’ve ever done anything like this in public.

“Hey!” shouts Raleigh, throwing the door closed behind them and dragging Cullen forward, “This is my boyfriend, Cullen.”

_Boyfriend?_

Something in Cullen’s chest seems to snap. It’s like the whole world just changed… someone cares about him enough to _tell_ everyone… for once he’s not an embarrassment.

The room erupts with cheers, ostensibly for him, but Cullen knows it’s probably a function of drunkenness and who-knows-what-else. It doesn’t matter; he’ll take acceptance any day of the week—it’s more than he’s used to. It’s especially easy to tolerate as Raleigh leads him around the room, introducing him to everyone.

‘This is my boyfriend, Cullen,’ he says, ‘he’s a hell of a bassist,’ and ‘you’d be lucky to hear him play.’ People shake his hand and clap him on the back. They ask him questions about his music and ask where to see him on stage.

And even in the midst of all of this, Cullen knows it’s too good to be true. There’s some nagging feeling that he can’t quite shake… and most of it has to do with the fact that he knows Raleigh would not be doing this if he weren’t high. He knows all the signs at this point.

“Nice to meet you,” says someone on the couch. She looks as if she’s _part_ of the couch, actually; she’s so relaxed. “I’m Meredith.”

Raleigh seems to stiffen in front of her, although Cullen doesn’t really know why. He figures it out a second later, when she glares at Raleigh piercingly.

“How’s that money coming?” she asks. Her body stays utterly relaxed, but the temperature in the room seems to drop ten degrees all of a sudden.

“It’s coming,” growls Raleigh.

 

“Who was that woman?” asks Cullen when they’re alone later. It’s almost morning, from the look of things outside the bedroom window. The sun is just beginning to crest in the distance.

“Which one?”

Cullen rolls his eyes. “ _The_ one—you basically shit yourself when she talked to you.”

Raleigh shrugs. He doesn’t seem like he thinks the joke is funny.

“I’m just kidding,” adds Cullen. He pulls the covers back and slides between them, reaching out for Raleigh as he does. When they’re face to face in the dawn light he whispers, “She kinda scared me… I was just wondering what all that meant—sounded like a threat.”

Raleigh shrugs against his pillow, even as he pulls Cullen into his chest. “She’s just someone I used to know… used to be a hell of a musician, really… but now she’s more of an _entrepreneur_ than anything else.”

 

* * *

 

 

“I knew what that meant, of course,” I explain. “She was his _dealer_.”

The therapist nods. “And did you see more of her?”

I shake my head. “No, but I _heard_ of her a lot. She started texting at all hours of the night. Leigh was really cagey about it at first, but… then…”

“Then what?”

“Well… at a certain point, I started to get into… _it_ … the drugs…” I admit. “...and from then on out he was a little less guarded with me—not _only_ when he was high. It kind of changed the whole dynamic.”

She raises an eyebrow and looks up from her pad of paper. “Do you think that’s _why_ you did it? Did you expect that would be the outcome?”

I run a hand across my forehead. “I think maybe I did… at first…”

“What about in the long run?”

“Well… once we started getting high _together_ I think I did it for other reasons… I mean… have you _fucked_ high? It’s like a whole different experience.” I smirk at her, but she doesn’t look amused. I sigh and rub my hand up and down the opposite arm. “I never got as into it as he did, though… I mean… he was _really_ in over his head…”

 

**4 Months Ago**

 

“Don’t even think about coming back up here!” Raleigh shouts. “Fucking hell, who the fuck do you think you are?”

Cullen hears the whole exchange from the front of the house. He’s been trying to smooth things over with the club manager all day. It’s harder than it should be. This yelling is the last straw. He almost _runs_ backstage.

“Leigh,” he half-whispers, half-yells. “Leigh… can you tell me what’s going on?” He puts his hands on either side of Raleigh’s neck and tries to direct his gaze.

Raleigh scowls and jerks his head free. His pupils are asymmetrically dilated.

“What happened?” Cullen asks.

“These assholes fucked with my stuff,” he slurs.

Cullen squints. “ _What_ stuff?”

Raleigh rolls his eyes and gestures like it’s all _very_ obvious. “All my shit, Len… Andraste...fuck…”

“Hey… Babe…” Cullen whispers the endearment. It’s all still sort of cagey in public, but he thinks it might calm Raleigh down. “Let’s go get a cup of coffee… we’ve got some time…”

“No,” argues Raleigh.

“Some water?” suggests Cullen. “Even just a walk?”

They stand there, face to face, for what feels like an age. Cullen watches Raleigh shift from foot to foot, like he’s trying to stay upright against a rolling sea. Finally, he drops his gaze to the floor and sighs.

“Fine,” Raleigh says. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

...and it feels like the worst is over, but it isn’t—Cullen just can’t see it yet.

 

* * *

 

 

“It’s funny how things happen sometimes,” I say, interrupting my own train of thought.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, sometimes, it just seems like there’s some kind of cosmic something… because the day we got pinched… if I’d been in that apartment with Raleigh, I don’t think I’d be _here_ … I think I’d be—” I interrupt myself, throat suddenly tight.

“In jail?”

I nod. “Yeah… with him…” I swallow dryly. “And… to be honest, I’m not sure which I’d prefer…”

“How did you end up outside anyway?”

“We were fighting… again,” I answer. “He was coming down and I pushed him about something—I can’t even remember _what_ … but he was furious.”

 

**2 Months Ago**

 

...and then it’s over. Cullen picks up his things—his bass and a duffle bag of shit he barely cares about—and walks outside. A car whizzes past; someone yells two streets over. He feels the pavement beneath his feet—cracked and sharp—but he isn’t really _here_. He’s still in that apartment… he’s still with _him_...

In fact, it isn’t until he hears the sirens in the distance that he comes back to himself. He doesn’t move, though. Stupidly, he stays stuck to the ground outside Raleigh’s apartment until he’s in handcuffs. He tries to get Raleigh’s attention from the back of the squad car, but Raleigh won’t look at him through the glass.

They’re separated after that. The next forty-eight hours are an exercise in blood and hair tests, urine samples, and cavity searches. Cullen doesn’t protest, though. All he asks for is to see Raleigh… and it’s the _one_ thing they won’t let him do. By the time he’s greeted by his court-appointed attorney, he’s almost given up hope, but he asks again.

“Listen… I need to see the guy they brought in with me,” says Cullen. “Name’s Raleigh Samson.”

The attorney looks down her nose at him and clicks her tongue. “I’ll see what I can do.” She has a gap tooth that makes her look vaguely like a supermodel, but her expression is pinched and sour. “In the meantime, we’ve got to talk about your defense.”

He shakes his head. “Not until I talk to Leigh…”

She rolls her eyes, but eventually acquiesces. It takes another _three_ _hours_ to see him, though. And when he does, it isn’t what Cullen is expecting.

 

“Leigh,” Cullen breathes. He tries to raise his hands and reach for him on instinct, but he gets caught by the handcuffs. Unfortunately, Raleigh’s situation is even more dire. _His_ cuffs are attached by a long metal clasp to a matching set on his ankles. They’re forced to sit face to face across the cold metal table without the possibility of touching. “What happened?”

Raleigh doesn’t look up from his hands. He seems to be studying them. “I shouldn’t say.”

“What?”

“They’re listening.”

Cullen’s eyes dart around the room and linger on the large wall mirror over Raleigh’s shoulders. He swallows nervously. “Well, I’m not going to let you go down for this alone.”

Now Raleigh _looks_ , and the fear in his eyes cuts through Cullen like a knife never could. “ _No_.”

“No?”

“Fuck, Len…” Raleigh hisses. “I’ve already decided; it’s me… alone… _I’m_ the one who has to pay…”

“What?” Cullen gasps.

“It’s over; I’ve already made a full confession; I won’t say anything else about it.”

“You don’t have to do this,” argues Cullen.

Raleigh glares threateningly. He bangs on the desk while Cullen tries to argue. The sound makes a security guard enter the room and start to detach his restraints.

“Leigh… Leigh, please…” babbles Cullen. “ _Please_ don’t!”

Raleigh won’t look up.

“You don’t have to be a martyr!” yells Cullen. “I was there; I’m in this… _with_ you!”

Raleigh turns toward the door and marches mechanically forward—a shell of the person he was just yesterday.

“Leigh, I love you!” Cullen shouts. It’s the last second—what does he have to lose?

Raleigh doesn’t say anything; he doesn’t even turn around.

...but he _hesitates_ … and that’s when Cullen _knows_ —he loves him too.

 

* * *

 

 

“Cullen, thank you for telling me all that.”

I nod. My eyes feel glassy. I can’t remember the last time I cried. It’s not part of my nature, but this has rung me dry emotionally. It feels like I’ll never recover. It must be really obvious, too, because I’m handed a tissue box the next second. I’m reticent to actually _use_ it, though. It feels like admitting defeat.

We sit in silence for what could be two minutes or ten.

“So… looking back on all of this…” she says quietly, “do you feel like you’ve gained any clarity?”

_Do I?_

“Maybe…”

“Perhaps about what you’d _change_?”

“Change?” Some part of me insists that I’m insane, but every cell in my body resists that word. “I wouldn’t _change_ it.”

She raises an eyebrow at me.

“I mean, yeah… I’d prefer _not_ to be arrested… I’d prefer _not_ to shoulder the guilt of being the one who walked away… and I’d like it if Leigh and I were just at home together… doing our lives…” I say. “But if I have to choose between what _did_ happen and _never_ being together?”

She squints at me, like she can’t imagine what I’m about to say. To be honest, I don’t really know either until my mouth forms the words.

“Take me back to that first night… to that first _morning_ in his apartment… and tell me how it ends? **I’d do it _all_ again**.”

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to Aurlana for being my second set of eyes. <3 You're a doll.


End file.
